The Assassin and the Handler
by Lady Shaye
Summary: She doesn't know if he is in love with her, but the look in his eyes and the way he strokes her hair when they kiss makes her think that maybe he is. "You make me human again," he tells hers, and it feels like a fairytale.


Disclaimer: No, I do not own the Bourne series. I also do not own Matt Damon or Julia Stiles, which makes me cry on a daily basis. *sniffs* Why do you people keep torturing me about this? It's like you _want_ me to cry!

...anyway...yeah, this is basically my take on how their relationship would have developed, and what I would _like_ to be the ending set after the movie. I apologize if it seems a little off, as it has been forever since I have seen _Ultimatum_ and so some of my facts may be a little skewed or, in fact, wrong. Though I seriously doubt the latter. Just kidding, there's probably so many mistakes in this. I'd like to thank _boronia-lee_ so much for offering to beta this, even if it never happened-your writing inspires me and I'm so glad that you and I actually got to talk!

(Set mostly in Nicky's POV, from beginning to end. Thanks for reading, you guys!)

* * *

><p>The first time she sees a picture of Marie Kreutz, it shocks her. They look a little alike. Reddish-dark-blond hair, dark eyes, pale skin. They're around the same height and weight and, according to Miss Kreutz's history, they have the same flighty tendency. It's the same tendency that made Nicky get as far away from her little hometown as she could as soon as she turned eighteen. It's the same tendency that has left her unable to love anyone for the longest time. It's the same tendency that made her accept her position as handler and psychologist for the assets of Treadstone right after college.<p>

The first time she sees a picture of Marie Kreutz, she wonders if Jason's subconscious picked her because they just look so very much alike.

The first time she sees a picture of Marie Kreutz, she goes home and changes her hair.

* * *

><p>The first time she meets Jason Bourne, he is cold and unwilling to be comfortable around her. He protects her from his past, she thinks, because he thinks of her as little more than a college student, which is pretty much true. She's only in her early twenties, fresh out of college and several years his junior, and he must think that she hasn't seen or heard worse. But she's cleaned up crime scenes, gotten rid of an entire asset's life history of information in an hour, and she's heard stories that make most people's blood run cold. Her job has turned her into something she never thought she would be, but it is her life.<p>

And he wants to _protect _her from it. Ridiculous, she thinks, but maybe it's the only way he can show affection.

That's what she thinks at first. (But Jason has many other, _better_ ways of showing affection, she discovers later.)

Their first sessions as his handler and, consequently, psychologist, do not go well. He complains often of headaches, which is what many assets suffer from, especially after taking down their target. He doesn't talk much, but she's used to that from assets. They don't like to talk about their jobs; for some, it makes them seem more real. For others, talking is just too unusual.

His headaches turn into migraines, and he spends more time lying on the couch in her office, not speaking at all and drinking the tea she gives him, than talking like he was originally supposed to do. He starts talking more when she doesn't press him, she quickly discovers, and soon he is telling her about his early life and a past he doesn't like talking about. He tells her about missions he would rather forget, and that he is good at his work but that he hates doing it.

"I don't know how to be anything else," he confesses during his seventh session.

She hugs him after his session ends that day, and she finds herself faintly surprised when his hands curl hesitantly around her waist. She strokes his back and he lets her, and she isn't surprised when he pushes away first. He's not one for touching, even when he does let go of himself.

During his next session, which she schedules at his own apartment in Paris to make him feel more comfortable, they have an argument over his medicine dosage. He wants less, but his headaches are increasing in both strength and frequency, and the Ibuprofen doesn't do anything anymore for him. She's convinced he might need more after taking down targets.

"It's your guilt taking on physical symptoms," she explains to him, trying to stay calm and being as patient as possible. "It's either you suppress it or you stop doing this. It's going to destroy you. You need medication."

"I don't need _anything!_" he argues with her. "And I certainly don't need any_one_!"

"I don't believe that," she says softly, trying to soothe him and talk him down. "You know that's not true. Jason, everyone needs someone. Come on, talk to me. Talk to me, you know you can. I'm here to help you."

He sits down on his couch, massaging his forehead, and for a moment she thinks he might be crying. It's not hard to imagine. She's seen several assets break down in front of her. But he wipes away tears that might even be nonexistent, it might just be her imagination, and he looks up at her with the most exhausted, pained expression she's ever seen. She sits down next to him and it is him who pulls _her_ into an embrace, his arms warm and tight around her shoulders, holding her as tightly as he can.

Nicky holds him and lets him let go, his face buried into her shoulder, his shoulders shaking. When he looks up at her, his eyes are no longer dry and his expression is softened and just a little bit broken. It makes her feel close to crying herself, but she remains strong for him. This is her job, after all. She cups his cheek in her hand and he soaks in the contact, leaning into her touch with a kind of vulnerability she's never seen in him before.

He looks down at her, and she looks up at him, and he takes her face into his hands and kisses her. His kiss is strong and passionate, his lips warm and moving as a wave of passion and lust sweeps over her faster than a Paris breeze in the spring. His breath on her is hot and scented faintly of mint, his hands on her upper arms as his kiss moves to her neck and shoulder. (Thank _God_ she chose to wear a shirt with low-shoulder sleeves today.) Before she knows it, his shirt is off and his bed is extremely comfortable and the muscles in his arms are sinewy but strong and are, in her own opinion, very sexy.

His lovemaking is slow and passionate, and he knows how to make her scream. He pushes all the right buttons: the sensitive spots on her throat and the side of her neck. And she, in turn, makes him moan out her name and several calls for a higher deity.

* * *

><p>It is a quiet relationship that they do not mention in public. Treadstone and all of its members know nothing about it. As far as the world is concerned, as far as anyone will ever know, Nicky has transferred their sessions to his apartment because it makes him calmer to be in a more familiar environment. <em>Not<em> because they are together.

She doesn't know if he is in love with her, but the look in his eyes and the way he strokes her hair when they kiss makes her think that maybe he is. She knows that she is in love with him. She has always been a sucker for doomed, tragic romance, but just for a while, she convinces herself that maybe it won't be that way. Maybe they won't end. Maybe he'll get out of Treadstone one day and they can be in a public relationship. But until then, no one can ever know.

He confesses to her one time, while they are lying in the bed together and she is listening to his heartbeat with her head against his chest, that she makes his headaches better. She makes the job more bearable, because she understands him and she knows how to take the pain away. "You make me human again," he tells her, and she responds the only way she knows how: a kiss and a warm embrace to make him forget all the pain that is possible. As always, he lets her and he holds her tightly.

His nightmares are recurring and they worry her. As frequently as they come, she's amazed he isn't quietly going crazy.

Their sessions are still mostly sessions. He still talks about his mental health and about the missions he was too afraid to describe to her before. But now he trusts her with anything and everything, and she tries not to let that worry her. (Maybe they _are_ getting too attached…maybe she should stop being his handler? Oh, quit being silly.)

One day, she becomes enamored with Paris and tries to remember why she fell in love with the city in the first place. So far, the best thing in Paris is the sights…and Jason. So she takes a day off, a day where he has no targets and nowhere else to be, and convinces him to go with her and explore the city. He laughs with her and holds her hand as they walk around and point out their favorite parts of Paris. It feels like they are a couple. It feels like an aver age day between two people who love each other. It feels like a fairytale.

It's a long summer day, and it's hot, but his fingers are still cold when wrapped around hers. He tells her when she asks that low blood circulation runs in his family and that he inherited it from his father. It's a tidbit about him that she's never known. His family is not something he likes to talk about to anyone, even her. Something leads her to believe that he thinks that some things are just better left unsaid. Sometimes it's true.

She tells him why she chose to come to Paris for abroad studies. How she was approached by Treadstone for her high scores and her remarkable ability for psychology. Why she never went back to America. Why he is the best thing, hands down, that's ever happened to her.

That makes him smile without explanation and kiss her.

The day is perfect. But perfect things must come to an end. All things must come to an end, good or bad. This she knows.

He goes back to the job he cannot bear, and she listens to men with no future talk about killing people and being too scared to love anybody. Jason is the exception. Her sessions with him are filled with understanding and desire. Her attraction to him seems endless and limitless, and their passion doesn't die. The chemistry between them is thick in a room, and most days it's all she can do not to call him and at least hear his voice. He's often in other countries, doing his job or working undercover to get more information on his targets, and she doesn't see him every day. She's lucky if she sees him once a week. It makes their passion even more everlasting, she thinks.

* * *

><p>One day Conklin calls to tell her that she is having an emergency session with Bourne. He doesn't tell her why, only that it's important and to cancel any other sessions or plans that she has for the day. She doesn't argue that it's one of her rare days without sessions, or that she had planned to just sit home and read a book. Silently, she hangs up the phone, cancels her appointment at the hairdresser's (her hair is long and almost to her mid-back now, which is far too long but Jason likes it that way anyway, so she doesn't argue with Conklin), and goes to his apartment.<p>

He stumbles in an hour later, tired and covered in blood and dirt. Hugging him, she quickly discovers that it's mostly other people's blood, but that he was also shot in the left upper arm—almost to his shoulder—and in the back. They're only flesh wounds, and she's had basic medical training, thanks to Treadstone and a medical course back in college, so she tells him to lie on his couch on his stomach. He complies with little complaint, mostly silent, and she takes off his shirt and pulls out the bullets with a pair of tweezers and a cold compress for his forehead, which he complains of as aching. She's never seen headaches like his before; they leave him with a fever and he's left almost incapable of anything but lying down and mumbling to himself and, occasionally, her.

After she cleans and wraps up the wounds, which leave bandages around his upper arm and upper chest, she gives him a few pills to help the headache and to make him sleep better, and tells him to rest. They'll talk later, she says, and he submits with no disagreement. She promises to be there when he wakes up, and he begs her to stay close. Unable to argue with him while he seems so vulnerable and weak, she lets him fall asleep on his stomach with his head in her lap and his hand gripping hers tightly. The only way she even knows he's asleep is because his breathing slows and his grasp loosens just the tiniest bit.

He sleeps for nearly twelve hours.

Nicky watches him wake up the next morning. He looks up, confused, to find himself lying in his bed and to see her sitting beside him. "How did you move me?" he asks, sitting up. She pushes him back down with a hand to his shoulder, and he doesn't resist. He's still weak.

"One of my exes was a drunk," she says by way of explanation. "I'd shake one of his shoulders if he needed sleep and half-drag him to bed. It would be a sort of drowsiness, so he could just stumble to the bed and fall straight back asleep. Apparently, it also works on exhausted, bullet-filled men with headaches and a tendency to never do as they're told. Apparently, you also sleep very lightly, but I think you were just due for a good long deep sleep, because you didn't wake up when I walked you to bed about an hour after you fell asleep."

He runs a hand through his hair. "Oh. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Think you might want to eat something?" she lays a hand on his forehead. "Your fever's nearly gone."

"Yeah…sure." He looks faintly unsure of himself. "Thanks."

"Stop thanking me. It's all right. I'll be back with toast and tea in a minute. Don't go anywhere, 'kay?" She cracks a smile and he responds in the same way. She leaves him only for a moment and returns with his breakfast on a tray she found in one of his cabinets. "Thank God your toaster works. I don't think I burned it."

He smiles at her. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. I called in for both of us. Told them you had a headache and I canceled all my appointments to go visit my sister in the US."

"I didn't know you had a sister."

"I don't. But the thing about Treadstone is that they don't background check their people once they've put everything in a file. I say sister, they say a-okay. Eat. You look hungry and I feel like being bossy."

He grins. "I don't have a problem with you being bossy."

"By the end of the day you will. Now eat your damn toast."

Smiling at her, he obeys without another word and she grins at him in return. They spend the day with her pampering and him minding her without a word. She rewraps his bandages and falls into bed with him; their arms are wrapped around each other, and she thinks it is one of the happiest moments in her entire life, and that nothing can ever be any better than this.

She is right.

* * *

><p>They have two more weeks of happiness. Days of handholding and passionate lovemaking and just general love. She tells him that she loves him and he even tells her the same. She sees him have a few weeks without nightmares and even his headaches are receding—a true miracle, she thinks, even though he doesn't appear to share the sentiment. He gives all the credit to her, calling her "his liberator." It makes her blush, but more importantly, it makes for one of the best moments of her life, next to when he tells her that he loves her and kisses her in front of a crowd of people like the end of a romance film. The kind of movie that's starts out with the lovers struggling but eventually ending up together. Yeah, that kind of movie. The good kind.<p>

Then the mission for him to kill that damn politician. _She _gave him the damn file. _She _told him when and where. _She _told him to get the job done, and _she_ never gave him a proper farewell, never knowing that it would be their last time truly _together_.

He approaches her before he leaves, if only to tell her goodbye. Their final meeting is in her apartment. He comes to her just after she gets home, and her head is aching. Nothing feels real as he murmurs those few words. "I have to go," he says. He pulls her in for one last kiss and she lets him, making it as passionate a kiss as possible. One last time of lovemaking, their movements slow and drawn out to make it last, and later she will think that she subconsciously knew it would be forever and eternity before she could touch him again, and that it would never be the same. She falls asleep with her head on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat, and when she wakes half an hour later he is gone.

She'll never admit it, not even to herself, that she cried when she woke up to find that he left. But she did. And at the time, she didn't even know why—after all, at first it was just a regular mission.

But then, weeks without hearing from him.

And the next time she sees him, he swears to kill her and holds a gun to Conklin's head. And it is one of the singularly worst moments in her life. He claims not to remember any of his past, and to love another woman now. This Marie woman.

She finds a picture of them, later, after Conklin is dead, of him and Marie outside a gas station several hundred miles away from Paris. They are laughing and smiling and holding hands, and leaning in for a kiss.

And _that_ is the very worst moment of her life. Even worse than when, a couple of years later, he holds a gun to her head and promises to end her life should she not give him the information he requires.

* * *

><p><em>It was difficult for me…with you.<em>

She never explains why.

* * *

><p><em>It gets easier.<em>

It might be the only time he ever lied to her, she thinks.

But the lie is so see-through that she thinks it barely counts.

* * *

><p>Buses suck. She hates taking the bus. But when Jason—no, Bourne, she must think of him simply as <em>Bourne <em>and nothing else—pushes her onto one, she cannot wait for it to start and take her away from him. She'd rather be far away than watch him fall farther and farther away from his past—further away from her, truth be told. That's what she's frightened of.

* * *

><p>The coffee shop is warm and nicely decorated, but their black coffee could use a good update. In other words, it's a nice place but the coffee is shit.<p>

She thinks without meaning to that Jason loved his coffee terrible, something she could never understand when she practically, but unofficially, lived in his apartment on their days off.

Watching the newscast, seeing that he lives—or, more literally, that his body hasn't been found, which means he's alive according to past experience—makes her smile. Even if he can't remember her…well, she can remember him and hope that she sees him again. And that next time, he might remember.

* * *

><p>The first time she sees him whole again, time has passed.<p>

Correction: _Years_ have passed. Far too many years for her liking. She sits in her apartment, the one she has rented for a year now in Greece, and wonders where the time has gone. It has been nearly three years since she last saw Jason. The last contact she had with him was a year ago, when he sent her a postcard from Spain. She wondered momentarily how he knew her address, but then she remembered. It was_ Jason._ As the kids across the street say, duh.

Her book is boring and she's read it three times already. She needs to go shopping. She needs to get a job, though she doesn't need the extra money, considering how much Treadstone paid her. But, you know, just to get out and see people. She needs to get a few friends, maybe even a boyfriend. She needs to get a life, for God's sake. Time will pass her by, she knows this. She can't expect it to keep waiting forever for her like a boy waiting for his prom date.

She stands up and hears a creaking in the apartment. Strange. The only things that creak in this apartment are the floorboards near the fridge. Oh damn. Nicky knows well enough how this goes. Is it another asset? Has Treadstone been reestablished? Damn it, Landy said it was over!

The first thing that comes to mind is to run out for help. But that won't do anything except get a few passersby killed along with her. If worst comes to worst, that's what she'll do, but it will only buy her a little time. No, best to confront the asset, knock him or her out, and escape. That might buy her a few hours, long enough to get a train or a plane and get the hell out of Greece. Ah, well, she was getting tired of this place anyway. Too damn hot, even if this place is a living, real-life postcard.

She slowly and silently grabs her gun from the drawer of the table next to her and stands up, abandoning her living room in favor of her bedroom. Her bedroom has a window that will lead to a fire escape, which she can use as her exit. It's nighttime, which may give her a little trouble navigating her way down the ladder, but she'll manage. She's done this before in far worse places.

A figure crashes through the door from the kitchen before she can reach the bedroom. Dammit. Damn it all to hell. Her cover's blown. Her location has been discovered. Mayday, mayday. Houston, we've got a problem.

She's about to die and cliché distress calls are bouncing around in her head. Damn it.

The figure grabs her by the wrist, making her drop her gun, as she tries to fight him, and his other arm wraps around her. His or her fingers wrap around her hair—which has grown considerably nearer to her waist now—and toy with it. Hissing, she spits in the figure's eyes, which leaves him—decidedly a him, considering how he bellows out in anger—far away from her as she fights him off and hurries to her bedroom.

She's halfway across the room, only a few feet from the fire escape, when his hand catches her by the wrist. Her light is on, and she thinks that she might as well know her killer before he marks her off his list, and she turns.

_Jason_. Jason, damn him. Fuck, he _scared_ her.

"Goddamnit. Jesus Christ, Nicky," he hisses. "You didn't even _scream_."

"What the hell is your problem?" she whispers back at him, just as angrily. "You sneak up on me and I think you're trying to _kill_ me, I think my vocal systems had a right to be fucking freaked out! Damn you, Jason, I thought I was gonna die!"

His expression softens a little. "I'm sorry," he says to her, and she's partly in shock. Jason hardly ever apologized before, when they were together. He was more inclined to give her a nice silent gesture of apology or show her his apology later that night.

Well, it worked. She always forgave him before.

But this is different.

"So, _are_ you going to kill me?" she asks pointedly. "Because if you are, I want to change some stuff in my will. I did leave a shitload of stuff to my mom, but she died last year and I haven't gotten around to fixing some stuff. Could you just—I don't know—wait till morning and let me go fix it? You can kill me right outside the damn lawyer's office if you want."

His look turns from apology into shock. "What the hell—No, Nicky, I'm not going to kill you!"

"Then why the hell are you here?" she says tiredly. "Because I'm tired of waiting. I want to get on with my life if I have to. I need to stop hanging onto a dream. Why the hell are you here, Jason?"

He releases her wrist and cups her face in his hand like he did that fateful day so many years past. All those years ago, that meant something. Now, she can't tell what it means. His expression gives nothing away. "Nicky…" his eyes search hers desperately, but she can't tell what he's looking for. "…I came to tell you that I love you."

"That you love me?" she spits back. "Is that some kind of a joke?"

"It's not a joke," he murmurs passionately, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "I remember, Nicky. I remember everything. It's taken me years, but I remember my entire life. It took me doctors and hypnotists, but I remember everything. My amnesia's gone, Nicky. I remember being David Webb. I remember joining Treadstone. I remember meeting you, and the migraines, and kissing you. I remember that day when we did nothing but enjoy Paris. I remember you pulling bullets out of my back and arm. And I remember saying goodbye to you that one last time, Nicky. I remember how much it hurt to leave that bed, and how much I loved watching you sleep. I remember how much I loved you then, and I'm telling you, I never stopped. I'm telling you that I love you now."

Her breath stops for just a minute, and then he places his left hand on the side of her neck and kisses her. She pauses for a moment, motionless, and then she melts against him, returning the kiss as best she can, considering she feels like a truck just ran over her.

Nicky breaks off the kiss for a moment, and breathes against his lips, "I love you."

She takes his mouth into hers, and she faintly feels him smile into the kiss. The sounds of nighttime Greece fade into the background as they stumble to her bed, and she registers one last thought before they reach blissful, thoughtless perfection together:

_I once thought I'd walk through hell to hold his hand and kiss him again._

And so she has. They both have. It's been hell, but now it can be heaven.

* * *

><p>AN: Yeah, yeah, all right, I get it, I'm completely and hopelessly sappy, and the ending is total fluff, but didn't you love it? Come on, admit you did!

Okay...you don't really have to admit it. Jason will just sneak into your dreams and torture you into admitting it, then come and tell me. I mean, my God, Matt Damon...

I'm thinking about a sequel, but I really don't know. Thoughts?


End file.
